Chauncey Billups starred on George Washington High's basketball team ...
Posted: 09/09/2014 09:18:40 PM MDT
Updated: 09/09/2014 09:28:14 PM MDT
(Editors' note: This article was originally published March 13, 1994)
In a hallway under the stands at McNichols Sports Arena, the tough-as-nails Grable twins sipped on postgame soft drinks and talked matter-of-factly about a state championship game in which their Horizon Hawks had lost to George Washington 71-67.
Competitors that they are, Keith and Dean Grable - a couple of muscular 6-foot-1 guards who look like they might have dropped by to play a little pickup ball on their way from a wrestling tournament to the Marine Corps recruiting depot - had to be hurting.
But the Horizon juniors could smile first about their effort on the Big Mac floor and second about the fact that they had lost to a GW team anchored by probably the best high-school basketball player ever to put on a uniform in this state.
Chauncey Billups, a foul-plagued bystander in the Patriots' semifinal victory over Cherry Creek the previous night, was everything his considerable buildup suggested he should be in last night's 6A championship.
All the numbers were there: 31 points, six assists and five rebounds. But they hardly told the story of how the silky 6-3 junior guard really affects a team that repeated as state champions last night after making the semifinals in his freshman year.
This year, George took the title with a team that included only two seniors who made significant contributions, its heart and soul being the four-man junior class led by the remarkable Billups.
'All year,' GW coach Ed Calloway Jr. said after his Pats had finally subdued the scrappy Hawks, 'we've been digging ourselves out of holes. And we dug ourselves out of another one today.
'These kids just don't think they can lose. It's a mind-set.'
The hole the Patriots dug this time was a 14-2 deficit in the first quarter, when the Grable twins were leading their team to a quick start out of the blocks and Billups was looking like an ordinary prep player rather than one who could be playing big-time college hoops next season if early exits from the high-school ranks were allowed.
Not until just 2:28 remained in the opening quarter did Billups get on the scoreboard for the first time with two free throws, and that was 30 seconds after he had committed an offensive foul that must have had Calloway wondering if his star was going to put himself in danger of spectating for the second consecutive night.
The GW star's slow start didn't go unnoticed by the Grable twins, who had combined for 12 of Horizon's 14 points in that early burst.
'When is he going to explode?' Dean Grable remembered thinking after that first eight minutes.
Billups exploded offensively, of course, but as much as his point production and court generalship, it was the confidence he obviously brings to his teammates that had so much to do with the DPL team's rise to the title.
The reason the Patriots don't think they can lose, as their coach suggested, is because they have No. 4 in their midst.
To see Chauncey Billups is to see something special on the basketball court. To play with him is to elevate one's game to a
higher level.
Senior center Derek Washington and junior forward Devon Ford came up big when they had to last night, but partially because Billups got them there.
And sophomore Jamal Clements would be the first to admit that the layup he drained for the final two points, putting the game out of reach, was the result of his brilliant teammate breaking the press and drilling a half-court pass into his hands under the GW bucket.
None of those memorable feats came as a shock to the Grable brothers, who have been playing against Billups since grade school, and are among the many who have benefitted from the experience.
'He has, said a gracious Keith Grable, able to put a disappointing night into proper perspective, 'made us better basketball players.'
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